As women have increased their participation in outdoor activities, they have begun to participate more in traditionally all male employment areas such as the military, construction work, and landscaping, for example, which are often removed from readily accessible restroom facilities. Outdoor sports activities, such as hiking and camping also often deny women access to such facilities. When engaged in any of the foregoing activities, women, when relieving themselves, must, out of necessity, remove their trousers or lower garments and their lower undergarment, thereby fully exposing their lower torso outside the private enclosure normally provided by a restroom facility. Thus an attractive garment that can be opened sufficiently to permit a women to relieve herself while minimizing exposure of her hips, buttocks, crotch and legs is greatly to be desired, particularly for active women.
Garments that have sealable openings in the crotch region thereof are found in the prior art, such as are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,522,421 of Wolf, 2,689,958 of Gray, 2,812,516 of Hoffman, and 3,956,774 of Spaulding. These prior art patents generally show garments for the lower body area that have crotch seams that open for access to the lower area of the abdomen, as for changing a child's diaper or removing an adult person's undergarment, etc. However, the prior art does not disclose an attractive garment for the lower body that can be conveniently opened without subsequent removal of a woman's underpants or similar undergarment to enable the woman to relieve herself without undue exposure of her lower body.